Popeye's Gonna Be Upset

Popeye may love his spinach, but he's going to have a hard time finding any in stores.

The spinach troubles continue, as more than a hundred people have come down with food poisoning after eating spinach tainted with E. coli 0157:H7 bacteria. The FDA originally suggested that consumers refrain from eating prepackaged spinach and stores and producers withdrew the packaged spinach from stores.

Now, the warning has been expanded to all spinach.

The Food and Drug Administration said Monday consumers should not eat any fresh spinach as investigators look for the source of E. coli bacteria that has sickened at least 109 people.

The initial FDA advisory late last week focused on bagged spinach.

Dr. Robert Brackett of the FDA told CNN, "We've expanded the warning actually to all of the fresh spinach. That's because we learned that some of the companies that produced the consumer bag spinach also produced larger food-service size.

Brackett said another concern is that restaurants or stores may use consumer-size bags of spinach to stock their salad bars or bulk bins.

"We want to make sure consumers are aware that they don't consume any of the fresh spinach. We don't know whether it came from the bag or another state. We just don't have the focus down that much yet," he said.

Spinach producers are voluntarily recalling their products. Brackett said the FDA does not have the power to order a recall but is working with the producers.

They do have the power to seize contaminated products, but Brackett said investigators can't do that until they determine the exact source of the contamination.

Something tells me that no one quite knows the source of the contamination and they're hoping that by pulling all the spinach from shelves that they can limit the number of new infections as they trace back cases to the source.